This article originally appeared in the Daily Breeze on April 15, 1994.

SPACE CENTER, Houston — An air pollution monitor aboard space shuttle Endeavour has found surprisingly high levels of carbon monoxide in the Northern Hemisphere, a NASA scientist says.

“We didn’t expect it to be as dirty as it appears to be,” said Henry Reichle, the scientist overseeing the research.

The equipment is monitoring carbon monoxide levels, a factor in global warming, between 2 and 10 miles high throughout the 10-day shuttle mission.

Previous flights in which the equipment was used found that much of the atmosphere’s carbon monoxide was concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere and could be attributed to deforestation. Burning of trees and grasslands in Africa and South America puts carbon monoxide into the atmosphere.

This time, Reichle said, the atmosphere over the Southern Hemisphere is clean while the Northern Hemisphere is more polluted than expected.

Reichle said Thursday the cause of the high levels in the Northern Hemisphere could be natural. Carbon monoxide is destroyed more slowly in the winter, and there’s less agricultural burning going on in the Southern Hemisphere at this rainy time of year.

The more carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, the less able the atmosphere is to clean itself, resulting in atmospheric warming and possibly ozone damage. Carbon monoxide is produced by cars, fires and industrial processes.

The main goal of Endeavour’s mission is to test $366 million worth of advanced radar gear that uses three frequencies to create 3-D images of Earth.

Ground controllers, pointing the radar via remote control, today aimed it at the southern Pacific Ocean. Researchers hope images of wave patterns there will help them understand the relationship between oceans and climate.

In a space-to-ground chat with high school honor students on “CBS This Morning” today, astronaut Thomas Jones said: “This is certainly the most exciting week I’ve had that I can ever remember. It’s very rewarding to see that our experiment is going so well and that we’re really bringing back the information about our environment that we came to get.”

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.